Watch Eels’ This Is 40 Outtake

I haven’t seen Judd Apatow’s new film, This Is 40, so I can’t really comment on its flaws or virtues, but I will say that I’m impressed by the film’s deep connection to music. That’s essential to the plot, of course, as star Paul Rudd plays an independent label honcho, but Apatow doesn’t skimp on the real-life talent giving his fictional world some verisimilitude. The soundtrack includes utter gems from Ryan Adams and Fiona Apple, among others, and Rudd is joined onscreen by a handful of musicians playing themselves, including Graham Parker and Bille Joe Armstrong. We’ve got a couple deleted scenes here, one featuring Eels’ Mark Oliver Everett, who plays a lovely version of “What I Have To Offer” before dropping the bad news: Eels will be leaving Rudd’s indie label and signing with Warner Bros. Hard to believe either Eels or WB would agree to such a pact in 2012, but hey, that’s the movies for ya. Watch:

The other outtake features Armstrong telling Rudd about a new project he’s hoping to work on, which will blend “Norwegian death metal” with Belle & Sebastian. This stuff, frankly, drives me nuts. There’s almost no such thing as Norwegian death metal. Norway is, however, widely renowned as the birthplace of modern black metal, having spawned Mayhem, Burzum, Immortal, Emperor, Darkthrone, Gorgoroth, Thorns, Satyricon, 1349, and a million others. Bille Joe then makes empty mentions of burning down churches and white supremacists, which are pretty obviously references to church-burning white supremacist Varg Vikernes, aka Burzum. So I think it’s fair to say that whoever wrote that scene fucked up, calling for the line to read “death metal” when it should have read “black metal.” It’s not exactly a crime against cinema (or music), but man, that kinda stuff just takes me out of the moment. If you’re peppering your dialogue with arcane music references, you absolutely have to get those references right, because if they’re wrong, the joke isn’t funny and the dialogue is dishonest. “Norwegian death metal”? Gah. I swear that’s the kind of thing my mother says. SMH. Watch it anyway:

Yeah, I mean there are bands from Norway who play death metal, but they’re still pretty anomalous, and plainly not what the film was attempting to reference. It’s just really lazy writing IMO, because you’re asking your audience to recognize and laugh along with your references — Norway, church-burnings, white supremacists, haha — while not putting in enough work to actually understand or properly contextualize those references yourself.

It’s not lazy writing – it’s improv from Billie Joe. Dollars to donuts this exchange was not in the script. You saying “whoever wrote this” is lazy writing. If you’re operating under the assumption that the scene was indeed written, then look to the credited writer – Judd Apatow. Surely that’s less of an obscure fact to accurately nail than the lineage of Black Metal. Especially in a movie that is clearly a mainstream comedy, not The Decline Of Western Civilization 4: The Nordic Years.

There’s also half a dozen credited editors plus anyone else involved in the process (including Bilie Joe) who could have written that line; if Apatow penned that one, he fucked up. If he didn’t, someone else fucked up. I don’t think it’s improv because it builds to a climax and ties up with a really well-timed joke. I’m not saying Judd Apatow is a bad writer — I’m a pretty big fan actually — but if you’re making jokes about obscure subgenres, with direct references to those subgenres’ well-documented histories, then get the names right.

Most Viewed

Last spring the world got a brief preview of Once Upon A Time In Shaolin, the secret Wu-Tang Clan album that will be released in a limited edition of 1 and auctioned off to the highest bidder. That might be all most of us hear from the project for the rest of our… More »

Kanye West debuted his much-leaked single "All Day" at the Brit Awards last week, and now a studio version has emerged. The So Help Me God song's bouncy, bass-heavy beat also features verses from Allan Kingdom and Theophilus London, and a massive "Monster"/"Black Skinhead"-style riff slices through the track from time… More »

Carly Rae Jepsen's "Call Me Maybe" was one of the defining jams of summer 2012, but it was the sort of song that screamed "one-hit wonder" from the rooftops. Well, that's not going to be the case. Today, Jepsen comes back with a new single called "I Really Like You," and it is absolute top-shelf… More »

Die Antwoord seemed to be on the verge of climbing to a new tier of celebrity this year with Ninja and Yolandi Visser playing prominent roles in the dystopian sci-fi twee oddity Chappie. Now they'll definitely be more famous, but not for the right reasons; notorious might be a better word for it. Drake and… More »

Mumford & Sons have announced the details of their third full-length, Wilder Mind, and it's bound to sound pretty different from the rest of the folk-rock group's output. As As they told Rolling Stone, the band went completely electric for the new album, ditching the folkier elements that catapulted them to fame. "We felt… More »